Sphere Of Flying Commuter Flights Within Florida Can Be Lessons In Frustration.

March 15, 1992|By VICKI McCASH, Staff Writer

You can`t get there from here. Or if you can, it`s going to cost you a fortune and take an eternity.

Such is the state of commuter flying in Florida. All flights, it seems, lead to Orlando. Or Tampa. Or Miami. But nowhere else. Not even the capital, Tallahassee.

The few direct flights you can get out of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach to other points in Florida are not cheap, particularly for business travelers who must travel during the week and often on short notice.

For example, a round-trip flight to Tallahassee booked this week for a return before Saturday could cost as much as $390 from Fort Lauderdale or $380 from West Palm Beach.

Some places are so difficult to fly to from Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach that business travelers opt for chartering planes or driving. There is no service, for example, to Fort Myers, Sarasota or Daytona Beach from either airport.

``It`s horrible, just horrible,`` said Myra Fischel, president of Southport Travel, a Fort Lauderdale agency specializing in corporate travel. ``It seems like Fort Lauderdale is always the airport that gets screwed. It`s like we don`t exist.``

Often, she says, she must send her Fort Lauderdale business travelers to Miami to get them to Key West, Tallahassee, Tampa or anywhere in southwest Florida for a decent fare.

Meanwhile, the commuter situation has never been better from Tampa and Orlando. Two commuter airlines -- Delta`s COMAIR and USAir Express -- are expanding their service out of Orlando. Tampa also is well-served by COMAIR and USAir Express. And Miami has both of those commuter airlines plus American Eagle.

``I rarely have a problem getting where I need to go,`` said Robert Cabrera, head of the mortgage division of NCNB, based in Tampa. But if he were traveling from a Fort Lauderdale base, he said, ``That would be a problem.``

He said he sometimes flies to Orlando then rents a car to do his business in Palm Beach and Broward counties and flies home from Miami.

W. Allen Morris, a real estate developer based in Miami, said flying to any of Florida`s smaller airports can take too long or be too expensive for a busy business traveler.

``What you have to do to get business done in more than one city in Florida in a day is charter a plane,`` he said.

Personal injury lawyer James Torres, who works for the West Palm Beach firm of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley, said chartering planes can be cheaper, too. If the firm needs to send more than one person to anywhere but Orlando, a charter plane can cost about the same as the commercial carriers. Orlando has low fares because of intense competition among United, Delta and USAir.

``The prices are unbelieveable for somebody who flies like me, at the last minute,`` Torres said. Sometimes, he said, he will drive to Gainesville because no airline flies direct from West Palm Beach. The connection through Orlando can make flying to Gainesville almost as time-consuming as driving.

A new player in the Florida airline market could solve some of the business travelers` woes. Jack Robinson, former president of Eastern Express, has started a new commuter airline at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. His airline, Florida Air, now has only daily flights to Nassau, Bahamas.

Robinson plans to add commuter service to Tampa later this month. His plan is to use Fort Lauderdale as a base for a flight schedule that connects all of Florida`s regional airports, using direct, low-cost daily flights.

``I sat down one weekend when I had nothing better to do and counted 150 point-to-point routes in Florida that nobody now flies,`` Robinson said. ``The lack of service and high fares have created a market for me.``

He said he will offer the incentive to business travelers to get out of their cars and on a plane. ``Just by being in a market, we will create demand,`` he said.

Other commuter airlines wait until the demand seems to be there before adding routes.

``The Fort Lauderdales, West Palm Beaches and Melbournes are not great traffic generators like the big three airports,`` USAir spokesman David Shipley said.

His counterpart at COMAIR said Delta`s commuter line will continue to build up its Orlando hub.

``The flights we add are likely to continue through Orlando,`` said COMAIR`s Gloria Weber. ``You have to understand that Delta has a lot of money in the Orlando hub. The question on other routes is, `Is the service really needed?```

Travel agents who handle a lot of business travel say yes. ``There`s a lot of call for it,`` Southport`s Fischel said. ``A lot of people -- land developers, lawyers, bankers -- need to get somewhere and it`s a hassle a lot of the time.